Disney Theme Park Chairman Resigns
Judson C. Green, a 19-year veteran of Walt Disney Co. and chairman of its thriving theme parks and resorts, became the latest executive in a long string of top managers in recent years to quit the Burbank company.
Both Disney and Green’s new company, Navigation Technologies Corp., said Monday that Green will become president and chief executive of the Chicago maker of digital maps for auto navigation systems, effective May 8.
Green, 47, a former chief financial officer of Disney, once was regarded as a potential successor to Michael D. Eisner, the company’s chairman.
Taking the helm of Walt Disney Attractions in 1991, Green led the push to add new parks, hotels and retail and entertainment zones. Second theme parks, hotels and retail-entertainment zones are being built at Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland to create “destination resorts” like Florida’s Disney World. The attractions division has become the most consistently profitable unit during Disney’s troubled recent years.
But in late 1998, Green was supplanted as the division’s president by Paul Pressler, the former president of Disneyland. Green became chairman of the unit and focused on overseas expansion, including negotiating the recent agreement to build a Disneyland in Hong Kong.
Sources said Green’s departure reflects not only the chance for ownership in a promising concern expected to go public soon, but also frustration with a boss whom he, like many others, considers manipulative and impulsive.
The executives avoided the appearance of discord Monday, with Green looking to the future and Eisner expressing thanks for Green’s work and wishing him success.
“Judson is an outstanding executive and his creative skills and business acumen are evident in our many successful theme park initiatives,” Eisner said in a memo to employees. He noted Green’s “critical role” in reaching agreement with Hong Kong’s government on the new theme park.
Green is the latest executive who, chafing under Eisner’s demanding style, has decided to quit and move on. About 75 high-level Disney managers have left the company over the last six years, including studio chief Joe Roth, who departed in January.
